


I Think That It's Best If We Both Stay

by sevenimpossiblethings



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: (as in recognizing which ones he's having), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bondage, Enjolras Is Bad At Feelings, Food, Friends to Lovers, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Kink Negotiation, Light BDSM, M/M, Non-Sexual Bondage, POV Grantaire, Sub Enjolras
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2017-01-02
Packaged: 2018-09-11 10:45:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8976514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenimpossiblethings/pseuds/sevenimpossiblethings
Summary: Grantaire becomes Enjolras's platonic bondage safety checker.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to kenopsia and thingsbeginningwithA for looking this over for me. Extra kudos to A, who pointed me toward the song "Stay Stay Stay," which is where the title comes from. 
> 
> Special thanks to Opium_du_Peuple for clarifying and otherwise helping me to translate/explain certain French cultural practices. (For example: I don't live in Paris, and this [map](http://www.radicalcartography.net/index.html?frenchkisses) is a nice reminder of why that's a potential roadblock to writing fic about Parisians.) 
> 
> A note about the warnings: Grantaire has a history of depression, and this is referenced a few times throughout the fic, including the fact that he used to self-harm. There are no scenes depicting self-harming behaviors in the moment, or in which any character expresses a desire to self-harm.

Grantaire purposefully does not permit himself to finger-comb his hair into something resembling respectable, nor to so much as glance down at his jeans, which are paint-splattered and are also starting to become awkwardly loose in some places, because while he’ll make time for non-commissioned art and boxing and cooking and Enjolras’s damn meetings, laundry is not even close to making it onto his “if I unexpectedly find myself with nothing to do” list, much less his “adult human things that must be done NO MATTER WHAT” list. (Jehan and Combeferre helped him come up with that one.) 

Grantaire does none of those hopeless evaluations of his appearance, because he’s here to pick up some flyers, that’s all, and he’ll be gone in two minutes, and he point-blank _refuses_ to make himself nice for Enjolras. He’s self-aware enough to realize this is a perverse defensive mechanism, but he doesn’t care. (Caring is what got him into this mess in the first place. A curse on golden-haired angels with commanding voices. A curse on marble-jawed gods-brought-low who could probably walk into a black-tie affair wearing holey sweatpants and leave a trail of dropped champagne glasses in their wakes that have everything to do with their presence and nothing to do with the inappropriateness of their attire.)

Grantaire pushes away all thoughts of Enjolras in worn sweatpants (Enjolras with his cheeks flushed from the champagne, the flute held between slender fingers) and knocks, once, then again, then finally gives up on himself and drums out an obnoxious rhythm on Enjolras’s door.

“It’s open!” Enjolras calls. His voice sounds strained, but that could just be the distance, the door between them.

Grantaire steps inside, careful to close the door behind him. “You shouldn’t leave it unlocked, you know,” Grantaire says—to no one, apparently, because Enjolras is nowhere in sight. “Are you aware of the kind of neighborhood you live in?”

“A _posh_ one, as you so often like to remind me,” Enjolras grumbles, from somewhere further in the apartment. Grantaire follows his voice down the hall, passing the empty living room, passing the WC and bathroom, both doors open, both sans Enjolras.

“Nailed it,” Grantaire says. He stops outside the last door, which is nearly shut, but not quite. “You’d waste precious social justice time if you had to go to the police about a robbery. Have fun convincing them to help you.”

Silence.

“Enjolras?” Grantaire hovers in front of the door, which must lead to Enjolras’s bedroom. He’s never been inside before—what cause would he have, during the kinds of get-togethers Enjolras hosted for the group?—and it feels wrong to think of entering without explicit permission.

“You can come in,” says Enjolras, his voice very stiff. “Only—you can’t laugh. Just. Don’t.”

“Okay?” Grantaire doesn’t move.

“Just. Come in.” From the other side of the door, a defeated kind of sigh.

_What the hell,_ Grantaire thinks, and pushes open the door.

Whatever he was expecting, was not—was definitely not _this_. To Grantaire, for all his usual attention to visuals and spaces, the rest of Enjolras’s room doesn’t even exist. Walls? Ceiling? It’s anyone’s guess.

Because Enjolras is sitting on his low bed, his face flushed, his hands decidedly tied together behind his back. He’s breathing quick, shallow breaths, his thin t-shirt fluttering against his heartbeat.

“You’re—you haven’t been robbed, have you?” Grantaire quickly thinks back to his glance into the living room: everything seemed in order.

“No.”

Not robbed. So.

_So._

Grantaire swallows. Slowly, he kneels next to the bed. There’s a pair of scissors on the floor, dropped or discarded.

“Can I help you get out of that?” He keeps his voice soft, measured.

He’s not sure what he interrupted by coming here, even though it was within the time range specified by Enjolras, and from the looks of it, Enjolras doesn’t really know, either.

“Yes,” says Enjolras, tightly. His head is turned away, and he won’t meet Grantaire’s gaze.

Grantaire looks at Enjolras’s hands, bound together at the wrist with a thin rope. Enjolras has laced his fingers together, in what Grantaire imagines must be an attempt to stop them from trembling.

Without thinking, Grantaire places one hand on Enjolras’s forearm, just above the ropes. “It’s okay,” he says. Beneath his palm, Enjolras flinches.

Right then.

Grantaire sets to work untying the knots. The ropes are fairly tight—Grantaire thinks Enjolras must have struggled, trying to get out on his own—but they come undone quickly under Grantaire’s hands. That’s the thing about knots: most of them are easy to undo if you can see what you’re doing, if you have the use of your hands. (There’s probably a metaphor about life in there somewhere, Grantaire thinks, but he doesn’t bother with the follow-through, not when the ropes are falling away from Enjolras’s wrists and the skin beneath is raw and red.)

Grantaire lifts the last loop away and lets the rope pool onto the blanket. Enjolras seems frozen, his back stiff, his fingers still clasped together.

“All done,” Grantaire says, again in that soft voice.

“Right,” says Enjolras, and his hands spring forward to curl together in his lap. “Right.”

Grantaire looks at Enjolras’s bowed head, the golden curls against the nape of his neck.

“Do you have—” he starts, about to ask for something Enjolras can use to soothe his wrists, before he spots a bottle of lotion on the dresser. Grantaire stands, fetches it, and turns back toward Enjolras. He doesn’t want to startle Enjolras by sitting on the bed—it seems presumptuous, somehow, for all that he just untied his wrists—so he crouches in front of him, the lotion held out like some sort of bizarre tribute.

Enjolras blinks at it for a moment, before slipping it out of Grantaire’s hands. The first drop that lands on his skin seems to wake him up; his shoulders relax and he lifts his head.

“The flyers are on the table in the living room,” Enjolras says.

It’s Grantaire’s turn to stare, because, _really, that’s how this is going to go_ , before he tells himself that, yes, if that’s how Enjolras wants it to go, that’s how it’s going to go.

“Great,” he says, and stands up. He hesitates before leaving the room, because his instincts—and not just his instincts, but his God damn _experience_ , okay—are demanding that he ask if Enjolras is okay, if he needs anything else…

Grantaire goes to the living room. He rifles through the flyers once before placing them back in their folder. He’s putting everything into his bag when Enjolras enters the room, his arms crossed.

Enjolras doesn’t say anything, just looks at him with a frown, his cheeks still pink. Grantaire steels himself to speak, partially because he has never met an awkward silence he couldn’t crash into, but mostly because while Grantaire cares… yeah, not at all about most of the things other people think he should be responsible about, he cares a hell of a lot about people (himself, people he’s with, people he’s not with, people he’s not with but on whom he has the most freaking ridiculous crush ever) practicing safe BDSM. Seriously, he’s drawn tumblr PSAs and everything.

“I’m not going to tell anyone,” Grantaire says, because that seems like a good place to start. “And we don’t have to talk about it. But self-bondage is tricky and can get dangerous. Especially if you’re just starting out. Or especially if you’re experienced enough that you think you can get cocky. Or _any time_.”

“I’m not stupid,” Enjolras says, his voice rising. “I made a mistake, that’s all.”

Grantaire raises his eyebrows. “Exactly. I get that you live alone, that this is… private, but seriously, next time, call Courf? Even if it’s just to have him sit in your living room or something? What if I hadn’t been coming for the flyers?”

“I managed to unlock the door before you came,” Enjolras sulks. “I would have been able to type out an email on my computer. Eventually. Probably.”

Grantaire waits a bit to let that sink in. (For Enjolras, not him, because he’s already trying not to think too hard about it, and not even in the sexy way, but in the panicked, _what the fuck, Enjolras, don’t you understand the risks, don’t you understand how you taking those risks is off the charts unacceptable_ kind of way.)

Enjolras narrows his eyes. “What do you know about it, anyway?”

Grantaire leans a hip against the table. “What do you think.”

“You…” That blush again.

“Normally I’m the one doing the tying,” Grantaire supplies. “But not all the time. You’ve got to try something yourself before you do it to anyone else, you know?”

Enjolras bites his lip. His arms are still crossed.

“So,” says Grantaire. “I’m gonna go now? Lock the door behind me, be safe, sane and consensual, et cetera.”

“Would you do it?” Enjolras asks, blocking Grantaire’s escape route.

“What?”

“Sit in the living room.” Enjolras lifts his chin.

Grantaire draws a shaky breath. Sit in the living room, while Enjolras… while Enjolras does whatever Enjolras is aiming to do, with ropes and God knows what else? Go back into Enjolras’s bedroom, untie him if he gets stuck again? Retreat to the living room, rinse, repeat?

“If you wanted me to,” Grantaire says.

“I’m _asking_ you, so,” Enjolras says.

“Then yes.”

Enjolras nods, once.

“Not… now, I’m guessing,” Grantaire ventures. Hell, even if Enjolras wanted to, he’d say no: Grantaire’s not prepared for this, not yet.

“No,” says Enjolras. “I’ll let you know.”

“Okay,” says Grantaire.

He settles the strap of his bag over his shoulder and leaves the apartment, Enjolras still standing in the living room. 


	2. Chapter 2

By the end of the next week, Grantaire is freaking _ahead_ on work. It’s always nice to be able to surprise clients by being ahead of deadline, but Grantaire almost never manages it, definitely not more than a day, definitely not more than one piece early in the same week.

No sexual frustration here, definitely not.

On Friday night, there’s a meeting scheduled, as usual, so Grantaire makes his way to the upper floor of the Musain, a café not far from the main campus, chosen for its location back when they were all students. Some of them—the to-be doctors, the to-be lawyers, are still in school; the rest of them left lecture halls behind a few years ago.

They’re on good terms with the proprietor, and as Grantaire readily admits that they tend toward rowdiness, and that a different, equally lenient proprietor for the group would be hard to find, he imagines they’ll stay at the Musain forever. Combeferre will have studied a half-dozen medical specialties; Enjolras will have finally managed to score a major legal victory (or seven); Grantaire will pluck grey hairs off of his sweaters and need glasses for detailed brushwork; and they’ll still be coming to the Musain, to drink and drink in Enjolras. (Or, as the others might put it, to be merry in company and plot to change the world, with Enjolras at the helm.)

Grantaire shows up just shy of being late, so he and Enjolras don’t need to worry about scenarios in which suddenly everyone has a conversational partner except for them (but not actually late, because Jehan fusses about that and demands payment in the form of poem illustrations, and while Grantaire is happy to add his sketches to their art, he’d rather avoid the sad eyes. He’s yet to meet anyone who can truly withstand the force of Jehan’s eyes when they want you to do something.) He makes the rounds for la bise quickly, making sure to keep his air kisses absent-minded and casual next to Enjolras’s cheeks and hastily turning toward Courfeyrac before Enjolras can say more than “bonsoir.” 

Bahorel waves him over, pushing a beer toward him, and Grantaire slips in beside him.

Combeferre calls the meeting to order, and they’re off.

“Don’t you all have an assignment coming up?” Grantaire whispers, frowning a little as he listens to the proposed Must Do This Week Action Steps (Enjolras capitalizes them in the weekly email he sends out, so they’re capitalized in Grantaire’s thoughts as well).

“You’re under the faulty impression you’re talking with someone studying to be a lawyer, my friend,” Bahorel replies.

Grantaire rolls his eyes.

After an hour and a half, the meeting winds down, and a half an hour after that, the group starts to disperse: first Marius and Cosette (citing first-trimester tiredness); then Joly (he’s tried doing med school on no sleep and everyone agrees that’s a bad idea) with his partners.

“You can loan me the gloves?” Feuilly asks him, standing up.

“Yeah, of course,” says Grantaire. “I’ve got a couple of extra pairs, it’s no problem. Anything to see you at the gym sometime.”

Grantaire makes to follow Feuilly toward the door, where he’s stalled, saying his goodbyes to the rest of the group, when Enjolras appears at his elbow.

“Hey,” says Enjolras.

“Hello,” says Grantaire.

Enjolras takes a deep breath, huffs it out. “You free to… walk me home?”

_Is that what we’re calling it?_ Grantaire wonders.Unless Enjolras really does just want to talk. 

“Sure,” he says.

It’s not that late—not too late for a walk, or to sit in Enjolras’s living room for a bit—and tomorrow’s Saturday, anyway: Grantaire could opt to not leave his bed all day, if he wanted.

They manage three blocks in silence.

Grantaire is bursting with speech—on the meeting, on the planned SNCF strikes next week, on the tightness of Enjolras’s shirt—but he waits. This is about Enjolras, after all.

“It’s just—nice,” Enjolras starts at last. “I. Like it, that’s all. It’s… secure.”

“I get it,” says Grantaire. “You don’t have to explain yourself, or justify yourself, or any of that, to me.”

“But _you_ do it _with_ somebody,” says Enjolras, his tone frustrated. His profile is harsh in the orange of the streetlights, but Grantaire knows better than to be fooled, now: underneath the frustration, there’s something soft. Something that wants, someone that wants, and not only in an abstract way—not for liberty, for justice—but for other things, too, small and mundane and infinitely meaningful. The bits and pieces you string together to help you make it toward that next big moment of liberty or justice—or so Grantaire imagines. He’ll leave the justice to other people. Brushes, pens, that’s what he knows. 

“So? You’re allowed to like things in the absence of another person, you know,” Grantaire says.

Enjolras is quiet again, and when he speaks next, it’s about the meeting.

When they get to Enjolras’s apartment building, Enjolras opens the door and waves him through, so Grantaire surmises that “walk me home” was a euphemism. Once inside the apartment itself, Enjolras heads for the living room, and Grantaire follows, taking a seat across the table from Enjolras when Enjolras sits.

“So, to be clear,” Enjolras says. “I just need you to be here. And if I need something, I’ll call.” He frowns. “I mean, I’ll speak loudly. I won’t call you on your phone.”

“I assumed that,” Grantaire says dryly.

Enjolras shoots him a glare, then straightens up in his seat. “I acknowledge that you were right about the… inadvisability of my previous approach.”

Grantaire nods. “I’m glad.”

He should give himself a gold star, or start keeping records or something: _successfully helped yet another person to practice safe bondage activities!_

“Is… is an hour okay, tonight? For you to stay?” Enjolras says. “I need… School is.” He stops.

“It’s fine,” Grantaire says. “Both the hour, and for whatever reason. You don’t need a reason, you know that, right? It can be just because. Although it’s good that you’re recognizing when you want to do, uh, stress-releasing activities.”

“You were doing really well on your sex-ed spiel until the end,” Enjolras says, but there’s a small smile attached to the words.

“I have a couple of questions, before,” Grantaire forces himself to say. 

“Oh?” Enjolras raises his eyebrows.

“Are you doing anything with collars, or gags? Because if you are—”

Enjolras shakes his head. “No, no.”

Grantaire honestly isn’t looking for an invitation to _watch_ ; he was just going to ask if he could _see_ the gags and knots Enjolras was using, to check they were safe enough for solo use, and to establish that Enjolras would be able to… knock something over, or some other signal.

_Sex logistics_ , Grantaire thinks ruefully. Except he’s pretty sure Enjolras isn’t going to actually orgasm while he’s in the apartment. Would he?

“Okay, so that’s easier, then,” Grantaire says. “Second question. Please tell me you have at least two copies of every key. That’s, like, _basics_ , but.”

“I don’t have anything with keys,” Enjolras says.

Grantaire acknowledges that maybe after you’ve protested as much as Enjolras has, there’s nothing enticing about handcuffs or their ilk.

“Okay,” he says.

“It’s not… it’s not like that,” Enjolras says, even though it is clearly at least _kind of_ like that. “I use, um, scarves, belts, that sort of thing. The rope was leftover from some art project Jehan did, a few months ago? They just left the rope here and never came back for it, so…”

So Enjolras appropriated it for his own uses.

Grantaire tries not to think about Enjolras appropriating some of Grantaire’s art materials for similar purposes. (He’s trying here. He really is. It’s just. Enjolras.)

“Okay,” says Grantaire again.

“And I found a different method, online, for… what I was trying to do last time.” Enjolras is staring at the table now. Grantaire spots a crumb near the middle of it and stares, too, just in case Enjolras decides to glance up. Grantaire thinks eye contact is probably best avoided.

“That’s. Good,” says Grantaire.

“Yeah,” says Enjolras. He looks up now, his eyes and mouth more relaxed than they’ve been since he and Grantaire sat down. “Hopefully.”

Grantaire laughs. “Go on, then. I’ll help myself to a book, or something.”

Enjolras waves his hand toward the bookshelves. “Be my guest.”

And then disappears down the hall.

_To do non-sexy sexy things_ , Grantaire thinks, half-hysteric.

Then he reminds himself that he’s supposed to be the responsible party, here. He tries to find a suitably responsible tome—a Russian classic, maybe—before abandoning the idea in favor of a _Redwall_ book he spots on the bottom shelf. Probably racist animal stories with absurdly long feast descriptions: perfect.

After about fifteen minutes, he gets himself a glass of water from the kitchen. He only had two beers, to be sure, but the walk to Enjolras’s was over a half an hour long. He probably should have encouraged Enjolras to drink something before he started… whatever he started. Unless he keeps a full water bottle in his room?

_Not my problem_ , Grantaire tries to tell himself, even though it kind of _is_.

He sets the glass on the coffee table and curls up into an armchair. There’s no reason he can’t be comfortable and responsible at the same time.

Enjolras emerges sometime around the first major battle scene. Grantaire sets the book aside, heedless of his page, in favor of (not) staring. Sometime in the last hour, Enjolras changed into fuzzy socks, sweatpants, and a worn red hoodie, and Grantaire almost wishes Enjolras didn’t look so calm and clear-eyed, so Grantaire could encourage a quick post-whatever cuddle. Platonic, but, like, who passes up platonic cuddles when your would-be cuddle partner is looking all soft and… cuddle-able? Possibly words are hard, right now.

“Everything went okay, then?” Grantaire says.

“Yeah,” says Enjolras. “Thanks.”

“Anytime,” Grantaire says, and winces, because—well, because he means it.

Enjolras glances from the book to the cup. “Oh. I guess I should have offered you something to drink, before I…? Sorry.”

“I know where your cups are, it’s fine,” Grantaire says.

“Do you want to take the book with you, so you can finish it?” Enjolras asks.

“Nah,” says Grantaire. “I read it at least three times when I was a kid. Anyway, I can finish it next time. Or.” He stops, heart leaping straight to rabbit-paced, fast and frightened.

“Next time,” Enjolras agrees with a nod.

 

There is, in fact, a next time.

And a time after that.

Enjolras favors Fridays, after the meeting, which Grantaire is fine with: if he wants to go out with some of the others, it’ll keep for Saturday. If Enjolras needs a warm body down the hall, Grantaire’s his man.

One late Tuesday afternoon, a few weeks into this arrangement, Grantaire actually drops his phone into the (thankfully dry and empty) sink when he receives a text message from Enjolras and, opening it, sees the attached picture.

Enjolras is sitting at his desk; a long piece of fabric—the belt of a bathrobe, maybe—attaches one ankle to a desk leg.

An instant later, the picture is followed by a text: _Work to do, couldn’t wait for Friday, needed something small. Hands free. Acceptable?_

Grantaire has either been very, very bad or very, very good in his past lives, and he isn’t quite ready to throw all his chips in with either option yet.

Mentally, Grantaire throws up his hands and just. Gives up. Enjolras—stupidly passionate, stupidly hardworking, stupidly gorgeous Enjolras—is texting him about his bondage routine. Checking in regarding Grantaire’s assessment of its safety. Its _acceptability._

_Holy shit holy shit holy shit_ , he thinks.

And then: _platonic platonic platonic, I will be the best platonic safety checker, absolutely platonic_.

After a minute, he composes himself enough to reply. He sends a thumbs-up emoji, because any attempt at a response involving words would have inevitably devolved into _I love you and I loved you before but I especially love you now that you’re trusting me with this._

After another hour, though, in which Grantaire is spectacularly (but not unpredictably) unproductive, Grantaire stares at the picture again (at Enjolras’s jean-clad thigh, at the way the hand not taking the picture is resting on his knee), and then at the text.

He sends another text to Enjolras: _Work is important. So are food and sleep!_

Grantaire’s not quite comfortable with the idea of Enjolras close-enough-to-be-literally chaining himself to his desk. Even if the belt was soft, was a comfort, a grounding mechanism. Even then. Especially then, because then what’s the incentive to get up?

 

Grantaire’s a few chapters into his current responsible-reading book when Enjolras calls his name. Enjolras hasn’t done that before, has never needed him in the middle or at the end, and Grantaire has clearly been lulled into a false sense of security.

He topples out of the armchair, stumbling when his legs get caught in the throw blanket Enjolras provided for maximum comfiness, and wouldn’t that be something, if Grantaire failed in his one purpose for being there because his movement was impeded by cloth?

Grantaire slides into the hallway and makes it to Enjolras’s room in approximately three giant steps, skidding in front of the door and pushing it open in one frazzled motion.

“Enjolras?” he says.

Enjolras is kneeling on the ground, his back to the door, but he turns his head, looking over his shoulder at Grantaire. There’s a red silk scarf in a heap on his lap, but his hands appear to be free.

“Oh,” says Enjolras. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. I’m fine.”

“That’s. Fine,” says Grantaire dumbly, willing his heart back to a normal pace: _false alarm, everybody, back to normal, now._

“I was wondering if you could help me. If you would be comfortable with that,” says Enjolras, eyeing him carefully.

Grantaire’s mind jolts about a hundred steps ahead, and he yanks it back. “What, exactly…?”

Enjolras holds out the scarf to him. With the fabric lifted away, Grantaire can see that his thighs are tied together. His eyes drift around, and yes—there, a hint of fabric indicates Enjolras has bound his ankles, too.

( _Not looking at his ass, not looking at his ass_ , Grantaire thinks, forcing his eyes to go from one scarf to another without lingering anywhere in between.)

“My arms, behind my back?” Enjolras says. “Just above my elbows, down, as far as the amount of fabric will allow.” He scrunches his nose. “I’m not satisfied with what I’m able to do on my own.”

Grantaire hitches on that word— _satisfied, the fuck Enjolras, do you even know_ —but steps toward Enjolras, taking the scarf from him and kneeling behind him. “Sure.”

Enjolras lets his hands fall behind his back. He’s wearing an old t-shirt, so when Grantaire puts a hand on his arm while making the first loop, there’s nothing between them. The tips of Grantaire’s fingers seem ten thousand times more alive than usual. Grantaire can’t feel his legs, and he’s certain he’ll be grounded to this spot on the floor behind Enjolras forever, because all of his nerve endings, all of his body’s electric signaling capabilities, are surely concentrated in the tips of his fingers, each brush against Enjolras’s bare skin igniting them.

Grantaire loops the scarf around Enjolras’s arms, holding them securely together, but not tight enough to cause undue strain on his shoulders or cut off circulation. As the fabric begins to run out, near Enjolras’s wrists, he asks, “Do you want me to tie it so that you can have an end to hold, and tug it when you’re ready?”

Enjolras shakes his head. “No.”

Grantaire finishes the knot as he normally would, then, tucking the ends out of Enjolras’s reach. His hands linger on the silk.

“Come back in…” Enjolras pauses. “Twenty-five minutes?”

“Okay,” says Grantaire. It comes out a croak. “Call me if you need anything before then.”

“Yeah.” Enjolras’s voice is softer.

Grantaire manages to stand. He shuts the door behind him.

Despite the recent lightning in his fingertips, he moves like a sleepwalker, or an automaton, back to the living room. He sits in the armchair, but doesn’t pick up the blanket again. He sets his phone alarm.

His heart is still racing, but his mind trails far behind, sluggish, having to heave itself through knee-deep mud just to come to the conclusion that _something’s different now, right?_

It was one thing when Grantaire was sitting out here, the emergency back up. But now—at least once, at least tonight—his role has expanded. Not just a negative role, to assist with the release, but a positive one.

It’s possible Enjolras doesn’t see it that way, Grantaire knows. He’s a convenient, knowledgeable body, that’s all, and has apparently shown that he can keep his mouth shut. So maybe Enjolras thought, as long as Grantaire is here already, given that Grantaire is here and available and knows about these things, why not put him to use?

That’s all, Grantaire insists to himself.

Even if some line was crossed, some boundary blurred—maybe it’s just a line or a boundary that only ever existed in Grantaire’s mind. Or maybe it’s a line that doesn’t matter to Enjolras.

_It doesn’t mean anything._

But Enjolras: he looked so beautiful.

Grantaire hasn’t, up to this point, let himself think about what it would be like to sketch Enjolras while he does… what he does in his bedroom on Friday nights.

Now, though, the fog in his brain evaporates only to present him with images of Enjolras looking over his shoulder, just like he did in his bedroom, only naked, and maybe Grantaire was the one to bind his delicate ankles, his strong thighs, and Enjolras peers over, waiting for that next scarf…

Grantaire would draw that.

Grantaire would draw that, a thousand times over. Enjolras in different lights, in different colored scarves and ropes, with a shirt or no shirt, no pants, no briefs, so many combinations and permutations, all of them breathtaking, all of them itching to burst from Grantaire’s fingers, to use that lightning and spill over onto a page—and Grantaire won’t.

He won’t draw any of them, not when a charcoal Enjolras can’t have the warmth of the body Grantaire touched mere minutes ago, not when that body isn’t his to draw at all.

Enjolras didn’t ask to be ogled; he asked to be bound.

Grantaire opens his book, just to feel the heft of it in his hands, just for appearance’s sake, however moot that might be.

The twenty-five minutes pass in a blink and an eon at once, and the alarm seems incongruous to the memory Grantaire has of the silk against Enjolras’s skin.

_I’ll need to pick a different one next time_ , Grantaire thinks, as he makes his way down the hall.

Grantaire knocks, to let Enjolras know he’s coming, then opens the door. Enjolras is still, his breaths deep and even, his fingers relaxed.

Grantaire crosses the room at once, kneeling behind him, resting on his feet, just as Enjolras is, and begins to unwind the scarf. When he pulls off the last loop, Enjolras’s shoulders loosen, but his wrists remain behind his back. Gently, Grantaire sets his hands on Enjolras’s shoulders and pushes, just a little, just enough to remind Enjolras to bring his hands forward. Grantaire rubs at Enjolras’s shoulders, kneading the muscle lightly—the binding wasn’t long or tight enough to cause serious stiffness, but a cursory massage never goes amiss—slipping down now to massage his upper arms.

This new angle allows him to see over Enjolras’s shoulders, and the sight of the blue fabric still wrapped around Enjolras’s thighs makes Grantaire drop his hands at once.

“Sorry,” he blurts. “Sorry, you probably want to—your knees. I’ll go wait.” He jerks his head toward the living room, pointlessly, as Enjolras’s back is still to him.

“No, you could…” Enjolras says, and shifts toward him. For someone else, the movement might have been awkward, but Enjolras manages it with grace. Enjolras’s hands lay on the floor on either side of his thighs, thumbing at the binding, but not undoing it. “You could?”

Grantaire sinks back onto his feet and reaches forward. When his hand touches Enjolras’s thigh, he stops. “Yes?”

“Yes.”

Grantaire unknots the fabric, and Enjolras stretches his legs out, lifts his knees so Grantaire can unwrap the loops. With two piles of fabric at his side, Enjolras remains still. Grantaire looks from the scarf around Enjolras’s ankles to his face, seeking permission. Enjolras nods. Grantaire unknots that, too, unwinding the scarf with care. When he’s through, he runs his fingers along each ankle in turn, then picks them up one at a time, bending and rotating them, encouraging the blood to flow normally again.

It’s only after he’s set the second ankle down that he glances at Enjolras. Enjolras’s eyes dart from his hands to his face; Grantaire can’t read them at all, but he lets Enjolras look.

_Whatever you like_ , Grantaire thinks.

“Thank you,” Enjolras says, after a long moment.

Any appropriate words of reply lodge in Grantaire’s throat, and he can only nod.

 

Grantaire is stupidly grateful that none of his current work projects involve bodies. He’s not sure he could handle drawing an arm right now, a calf or a cheekbone, not without turning the form into Enjolras.

Jehan has a late-night poetry reading on Friday, so after the meeting, the entire group troops over to the small bookstore where the reading is being held. Grantaire is careful to walk with Feuilly, careful not to think about what he and Enjolras are normally doing at this time of night on Fridays.

( _And how did this become a standing affair?_ he wonders. A weekly routine, just like boxing, just like their meetings? Sports, politics, bondage supervision, just another event on his mental calendar.)

Enjolras is up ahead, arm in arm with Musichetta, laughing at something she’s just said while Bahorel walks backwards in front of them. Grantaire didn’t notice it before—Enjolras must have taken it off before Grantaire arrived at the café—but Enjolras is wearing a red silk scarf.

Perhaps—surely—the same one Grantaire used around his arms the week before.

_It’s his scarf, idiot_ , Grantaire thinks. _Just a scarf! His own scarf! That he can do whatever he likes with!_

But the sight of it calls to mind the feeling of it running through his fingers, the look of it against Enjolras’s pale arms, all the same.

They’re all out late, with celebratory drinks following the reading, and Grantaire barely manages to get undressed before toppling into bed the instant he’s home.

He’s been fast asleep for an hour when his phone chimes with an incoming text.

_The fuck_ , he thinks, and then _why the hell didn’t I silence this_.

The text is from Enjolras: _Tomorrow (Saturday) afternoon?_

Grantaire blinks dully at his phone clock for a minute.

_Why aren’t you asleep?_ he thinks. (Enjolras, not being telepathic, doesn’t answer.)

_Okay_ , he texts back, and then, because whatever, they’re friends and something slightly different on top of that as well, he adds, _sleep well_.

The minute Grantaire sees Enjolras, it becomes abundantly clear that Enjolras did _not_ sleep well. There are deep shadows beneath his eyes, and his movements are listless, his blinking rapid. Grantaire feels the scruff on Enjolras’s cheeks next to his own as he greets him; normally, Enjolras is meticulous about shaving. 

“Did you sleep at all last night?” Grantaire asks. 

Enjolras followed him into the kitchen, where Grantaire’s pouring himself a glass of water, and Enjolras slumps against a cabinet.

“A little,” Enjolras hedges.

“Give me a number,” Grantaire says, shutting off the tap.

“Two hours? Maybe one,” says Enjolras.

“ _Why_.”

“I had things to do!” Enjolras says. “You know I’m working on that Saint-Ellier case for Lamarque, plus everything for the group, and I was making a lot of progress, and I didn’t want to stop for _sleep_.”

Enjolras is doing the second year of his Master’s alternating between classes and work placement. His work placement is at a law office, under the supervision of one M. Lamarque, and while Grantaire may have harbored some illusions about the real-world experience bringing a shade, if not of pessimism, then at least realism, to Enjolras’s blinding idealism, Grantaire has long since left them behind.

“You won’t be able to help anyone if you don’t get enough sleep,” Grantaire says.

“Thank you, Combeferre-slash-Joly,” Enjolras says.

“I didn’t realize that only people in med school are qualified to advise _sufficient rest_ ,” Grantaire says.

Enjolras doesn’t bother responding, just tilts his head back a little further against the cabinet, his eyelids drooping shut.

“I’m not sure this is a good idea, today,” Grantaire says.

Enjolras’s eyes snap open. “What are you talking about?”

“You’re too tired.”

“To sit quietly for an hour? You can’t be serious,” says Enjolras.

“I am. This is serious,” Grantaire insists, and wow, _talk about a role reversal_ , he thinks.

“Go, then,” Enjolras says.

Grantaire narrows his eyes. “And you’re still going to do something, aren’t you?”

“I _need_ to.” Enjolras’s voice, so sharp moments before, is now small. Exhausted.

“I have an idea,” says Grantaire. “You don’t have to—if you don’t want to, you can do what you want, fine, but hear me out?”

Enjolras nods slowly.

“Okay, then.” Grantaire leaves his cup of water near the sink and heads toward Enjolras’s bedroom. After a moment, Enjolras follows.

Grantaire stops at the end of Enjolras’s bed and edges the mattress several centimeters to the side; as he thought, the bed has slats underneath—the next best bondage thing, if you don’t have bedposts or a headboard.

“How about a nap?” Grantaire says.

Enjolras folds his arms, unimpressed.

Grantaire rolls his eyes. “Go get your favorite long-ish scarf, rope, whatever. Really soft, though.”

Enjolras crosses to his dresser, tugs open the top drawer, and after a few seconds of rummaging, unearths a piece of green fabric, about four or five centimeters wide and nearly two meters long. He passes it to Grantaire.

“Good,” says Grantaire, dropping it onto the bed. “My compromise is this: you sleep for a bit, but I’ll tie one end to the bed and one end to your ankle, so it’s still _something_. That sound okay?”

Enjolras eyes the exposed slats, then says, “Yeah, okay.”

Grantaire breathes a sigh of relief. He crouches down at the foot of the bed and secures one end of the fabric to one of the slats on the right, then readjusts the mattress, pushes the covers aside, and leaves the rest of the fabric coiled on the sheets.

Before he can say anything—like “you’re good to go,” or “you know where I’ll be”—Enjolras is sliding into the bed, pulling the covers over himself but leaving his right ankle free. He pushes up onto his elbows, so he can watch Grantaire.

Grantaire doesn’t move. “You want me to…”

“Yes.”

Grantaire smooths down Enjolras’s sweatpants, his fingers catching a bit on the fleece inside. Hastily, he picks up the length of fabric and fashions it into a comfortable cuff around Enjolras’s ankle. When the knot is finished, he checks the fit: snug, but nothing that would be uncomfortable to sleep in. He flips the corner of the blanket over the ankle—no cold feet here.

“Move around a bit for me?” Grantaire instructs.

Enjolras moves his leg, testing the length. There’s enough give to allow for a reasonable range of motion, but Enjolras will have to stay on the right side of his queen-size bed.

“It’s good,” Enjolras says.

“Good,” says Grantaire. “Do you want me to come back, or just wait until you wake up, or—you could set your own alarm…”

“You set one,” Enjolras says. “Ninety minutes?”

Grantaire is relieved he doesn’t have to fight Enjolras about the time; he was half-expecting some pitiful, half-hour excuse for a nap.

“Sure thing,” he says, moving toward the door. “I’m going to turn off the light now, okay?”

“Yeah,” says Enjolras, wriggling a little deeper into his pillows.

“Sleep well,” says Grantaire. He turns off the light and leaves, shutting the door behind him.

He sets the alarm on his phone, changing the notification to something that will hopefully be less jarring after ninety minutes of not (read: definitely) thinking about Enjolras sleeping at the other end of the hall, that deep green fabric against the dark grey of his sweatpants.

_I should have brought my pens_ , Grantaire thinks.

Not to draw Enjolras, not even to draw Enjolras’s paper-strewn dining table or squashy couch or overflowing bookshelves. But to have something to occupy his mind—his hands—other than a borrowed book. A way to be productive. That’s what everybody’s always telling him, right? Maybe not so much anymore, he’s mostly got that covered himself, but.

He doesn’t really want to be productive. That would be like bringing work to church: there’s something sacred going on here, something that demands a relinquishing of everyday demands and responsibilities.

There’s just this, now. There’s just Enjolras in his bedroom, and Grantaire in the living room, and working—even on doodles for their friends, even on sketches just for himself, nothing that will ever earn him a single euro—would feel somehow disrespectful. 

Grantaire flips through a few volumes of poetry, trying to settle his mind, maybe even find something good to show Jehan, but the words slip through his mind without leaving any trail or trace of meaning behind.

Mostly, he watches the sun shift on the carpet, as mid-afternoon slides into late, the pale yellow turning into a burnished gold as the angle deepens.

When his phone alarm goes off—less grating, this time, but still too loud, too sharp—Grantaire pads down the hall and knocks lightly on the door.

“Enjolras?” he says. “You awake?”

A noise that might be a sigh drifts through the closed door, then, “You can come in.”

Grantaire steps inside.

Enjolras is still lying down, curled on his side, toward Grantaire. His hair is mussed, and his oversized t-shirt is slipping a bit, revealing more than a hint of collarbone and shoulder.

“Ready for the light?” Grantaire asks.

“Mmm,” says Enjolras. “Yeah, okay.”

Grantaire flips the light on, and Enjolras sits up, blinking hard as his eyes adjust. There’s a pillow crease across one cheek, and it’s all Grantaire can do to stop from reaching out and tracing it with a finger.

“Did you fall asleep?”

“Almost as soon as you left,” Enjolras says. He shakes out his arms.

“Good,” says Grantaire. “Ready to get up?”

Enjolras nods, but makes no move toward his ankle. Instead, he looks up at Grantaire. Patient.

_Fuck_ , Grantaire thinks.

He walks around the end of the bed, then flips back the covers.

He unknots the cuff and lets the fabric fall onto the pillow. He picks up Enjolras’s ankle, pushing up his sweatpants just a few inches, just so he can check to make sure the binding didn’t leave a mark.

Collarbones, ankles—never mind Victorian times, they’re erotic _now_.

Grantaire runs his fingers along the exposed skin, rubbing it in circles. There are only the sounds of their breathing, and Grantaire’s fingers against the soft hairs just above Enjolras’s ankle. After a minute, Grantaire sets the ankle down, but when he reaches toward the other knot, still tied to the slat beneath the mattress, Enjolras stops him.

“Leave it?” he says.

“You’re sure?” Grantaire says, even though _of course_ Enjolras can just untie it whenever he feels like it. It’s not like he needs Grantaire for _that_ , if he changes his mind.

“Yeah,” says Enjolras.

“Okay.” Grantaire sits back on his heels. “Have you eaten today?”

“ _Ugh_.” Enjolras throws a pillow at him.

Grantaire catches it and sets it on the end of the bed. “Well? When was the last time you ate?”

“I had a pain au chocolat this morning,” Enjolras huffs.

Grantaire checks his watch. “Like, three a.m. ‘this morning,’ or eleven ‘this morning’?”

“Eight,” says Enjolras, grumpy.

“You’re way overdue for lunch then,” says Grantaire. “Aren’t you hungry?”

“I,” says Enjolras, then stops. “Yeah. I guess. I could eat. Let’s do that.”

Grantaire isn’t sure how he came to be included in this—Enjolras doesn’t need him to stay and watch him eat—but he doesn’t argue. Instead, he follows Enjolras down the hall and into the kitchen.

Enjolras opens his fridge, then his freezer, frowning.

“Food takes so long,” he whines.

“Here we go,” Grantaire says, more to himself and like, the stove than Enjolras. “What do you have?”

Enjolras steps back from the fridge and waves his hands at it.

Helpful.

Grantaire looks inside, assessing. His eyes catch on a carton of eggs. He double-checks the expiration date, then closes the fridge, eggs in hand, triumphant.

“You’ve got some kind of bread, somewhere, I assume?” Grantaire says.

Enjolras nods toward a cabinet, presumably where the bread is.

“Okay. I’m making you eggs. You get yourself some bread.”

“You’re not eating?”

“I ate before I came here. At a normal lunchtime. Like a normal person,” Grantaire says, then winces.

Not so long ago, he was the one having to set alarms to remind himself to eat, with Joly texting him at least once a day to make sure he hadn’t just turned off the alarms and ignored them.

Fuck normal.

Food was necessary, sure, but. Fuck normal.

“I’ll put water on, for tea?” Enjolras suggests.

“Sounds good,” says Grantaire.

Enjolras fills the electric kettle with water and flicks it on.

Grantaire roots around the cabinets until he finds a pan, then goes back to the fridge to get butter.

“How do you want them?” Grantaire asks.

“What’s fastest?”

“Frying, probably,” says Grantaire.

“That, then,” says Enjolras.

“You got it.”

Five minutes later, Enjolras is sitting across from him at the table in the living room, efficiently working his way through three fried eggs and two pieces of bread, slathered in butter and jam.

Grantaire sips at his tea and watches.

Enjolras’s hair is still wild from his nap. His movements are quicker and his eyes brighter than when Grantaire first arrived.

Grantaire wants him so much it aches. And not just wants in the sense of—in the sense of everything, in the sense of laying him back on that bed and devouring him—but this, too. Enjolras, awake, looking more settled in his skin than he had the day before, eating food Grantaire made and pausing now and then to smile at him across the table.

The degree to which he wants would be pathetic, probably, if it weren’t Enjolras. Who couldn’t want, in the face of such newly rumpled perfection?

“What have you been reading?” Enjolras asks, once he’s cleared the plate about halfway. “When you come here, I mean.”

Grantaire manages to find something to say about the poetry, and Enjolras nods, and then they’re talking about the reading last night, and how they agree that the man who read before Jehan was exactly the kind of pretentious they might have enjoyed when they were in lycée, but, really, enough is enough.

“Jehan’s hands, man,” Grantaire says, shaking his head. “I was half expecting, like, butterflies or flocks of birds or—”

“Lightning,” Enjolras supplies.

“That, too,” Grantaire says. “They would be ace at… hand-based magic. Whatever that would be called. None of this wand business, Jehan doesn’t need that.”

Enjolras nods, dragging his last piece of bread through the remaining yolk on his plate.

Grantaire hasn’t had a bite to eat, and still, looking at that plate, he feels satisfied.

“Can I do something awake now?” Enjolras asks.

_Why are you asking me that!_ Grantaire thinks. _Don’t ask me that!_

“Do you have any fruit?” he asks, instead of saying any of that.

“More food?”

“I’ll make it worth your while,” Grantaire says. “If you want. Otherwise.” He waves a hand in the direction of Enjolras’s bedroom.

_Why are you doing this yourself_ , Grantaire wonders. _You idiot._

Enjolras brings his dishes into the kitchen; Grantaire stays put. He listens to the sounds of the water running, of the plate clanging against another as Enjolras sets it in the dish rack to dry.

When Enjolras returns, he’s carrying a bowl with a clementine in it.

“Like this?” he asks.

“Perfect,” says Grantaire.

Enjolras cocks his head. “You’ll feed me?”

“Something sweet, to finish off,” Grantaire says. “We can do it however you’d like.”

“I can go get… what I want?” Enjolras confirms.

“Yep. I’ll be here,” says Grantaire.

Enjolras gives him a lingering, assessing look before sweeping down the hall. Grantaire starts to peel the clementine. He’s done by the time Enjolras comes back, a single scarf in his hands.

“How do you want this?” Grantaire asks.

Enjolras hesitates.

“We don’t have to,” he adds. “I’ll just leave this here, or, hell, I’ll eat it. You do whatever.”

“No,” says Enjolras. “I want to. You… on the couch.”

Grantaire relocates to the couch, sinking into the cushions. He balances the bowl in his lap.

Enjolras sits cross-legged in front of him, on the floor.

_Don’t even think_ , Grantaire instructs himself. _Just: nope._

“Will you do it, please?” Enjolras asks. “It’s better, when someone else… I mean. I think it is. It has been, with you.”

_He’s never done this with anyone else_ , Grantaire thinks, even though, yeah, he already figured that out.

Still.

It’s a good reminder that he’s not allowed to fuck this up.

“Hands?” Grantaire asks, just to confirm.

“Yes, please,” says Enjolras, and holds the scarf out to him.

The scarf is thin but soft, good for a firm hold. Like the fabric Grantaire used on his ankle, the scarf is a rich green. Enjolras lifts his hands toward Grantaire, wrists together, and Grantaire fashions the scarf into two coils, slipping them over Enjolras’s offered wrists and then tightening.

Enjolras sighs and seems to sink a little further into the rug.

“Okay?” Grantaire asks, checking the fit. “Good?”

“Yeah.” Enjolras sets his hands into his lap.

“Ready?”

Enjolras nods.

Grantaire breaks the first segment off from the rest, and juice runs down his fingers. He holds it carefully between two fingers, then leans forward, bringing the piece almost to Enjolras’s lips. Almost, but not quite.

Enjolras opens his mouth, his tongue flicking out, and he takes the fruit.

From Grantaire’s fingers.

It’s a delicate operation. No licking, no sucking—no lips, no tongues, no teeth, no contact between Grantaire’s fingers and any part of Enjolras’s body while he feeds him the clementine, one piece at a time, seven pieces total.

When he’s swallowed the last section, Enjolras licks his lips. “There’s another. Um, in the fruit bowl. There’s another.”

“Okay,” says Grantaire. “I’ll be—right back.”

Enjolras watches as he peels it this time. Grantaire has never been as conscious of his fingers, of the way his short nails struggle to dig into the skin, of how many strips of peel it takes him to unwrap the fruit altogether.

This time, when Grantaire holds out the first piece, he lets it nudge against Enjolras’s bottom lip, just the tiniest brush. An accident, really, from the slight trembling in his fingers, or maybe Enjolras happened to inhale just as Grantaire leaned forward.

Either way: contact.

Enjolras doesn’t move away. Instead, his lip brushes against Grantaire’s finger as he takes the section. Nothing obscene. Just more natural, this time, instead of the careful, artificial distance of before.

And again.

And again.

For all nine pieces.

“That was the last one,” Grantaire says, angling the bowl toward Enjolras, so he can see. “Want me to…”

“Wash your hands, first,” says Enjolras. “They’re all sticky.”

“Right,” says Grantaire. “Wouldn’t want to ruin your scarf.”

“No,” says Enjolras.

Grantaire washes both his empty water cup and the bowl, before he washes his hands.

That’s—good manners, right? To wash the dishes you used?

He dries his hands with a dishtowel, then wipes them again on his jeans, out of habit. Out of nerves.

When he returns to the living room, Enjolras has shifted, turning around so that his back is leaning against the couch. Grantaire sinks down beside him, and Enjolras holds out his wrists.

Grantaire loosens the loops, then slips them off, letting the scarf fall to the floor between them.

Enjolras doesn’t lower his arms; when Grantaire glances at his face, his eyes are expectant.

Grantaire takes Enjolras’s wrists in his hands, checking the skin, massaging, kneading lightly at those ligaments Enjolras surely strains from constant typing. When he’s done, he lowers Enjolras’s hands himself before releasing them.

“Where’d you learn massage?” Enjolras asks.

Grantaire shrugs. “Bit here, bit there.”

Enjolras raises his eyebrows, unsatisfied. 

“I’ve always done athletics, you pick things up along the way, for sore muscles,” Grantaire explains. “And it seemed a useful skill to keep cultivating, when I starting… doing this, sometimes.”

“Well, I appreciate it.” Enjolras licks his lips, no doubt chasing the lingering taste of clementine. 

Grantaire makes an involuntary noise—a squeak, a cough, a hiccup, something in between all of them.

“I’m… glad,” he ventures. “Good. That’s what I’m here for.”

_Stop talking!_ he commands himself.

“Thanks for this,” says Enjolras. “For the nap, and the food, and all of it.”

“Yeah, of course,” says Grantaire. “Happy to.”

_You don’t even know how happy_ , Grantaire thinks. _And I don’t want you to._

Enjolras stands; Grantaire copies him.

“See you at the meeting on Friday?” Grantaire offers.

“And after,” says Enjolras.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope everyone who needed a nap today got one.


	3. Chapter 3

Enjolras wears the green scarf to the meeting on Friday.

Grantaire _knows_ it’s the same scarf he used to bind Enjolras’s wrists together on Saturday. He recognizes that scarf on a spiritual level, now.

Enjolras fiddles with it throughout the meeting, and look, Grantaire has been pretty good, hasn’t he, throughout this absolute freaking madness that has become his life, this weird Twilight Zone slash parallel universe (he’ll have to ask Joly, which, precisely) in which he feeds Enjolras clementines on sleepy Saturday afternoons? In which Enjolras _lets him_ , asks him for another, even?

So, yeah, the scarf fiddling. Grantaire should look away, he really, really should, but Enjolras talks a _lot_ , and even when he’s listening to others speak, his presence seems to demand attention.

Grantaire’s leg starts to bounce underneath the table, only stopping when Bahorel reaches out a hand to touch his thigh.

“You okay?” Bahorel whispers.

Grantaire gives him a thumb’s up.

That’s about the level he’s operating on, right now.

Like previous Fridays, Enjolras and Grantaire linger, letting most of the others leave before them in twos and threes.

Unlike previous times, when it’s dwindled down to Courfeyrac, Combeferre, Jehan, and them, Enjolras isn’t the least bit subtle or casual when he says, “Ready to go, R?”

Is he ever.

“Good week?” Grantaire asks.

Enjolras nods several times. He’s practically bouncing as he walks. “Lamarque and I had a mid-term meeting on Thursday, to discuss my performance, and he said I’m one of the most promising students he’s had, ever. Not in the last year, not in the last five, _ever_.”

_Well, duh_ , Grantaire thinks. _Of course you are._

“That’s great,” he says, and then, because apparently the learning when to shut the hell up thing is still very much a work in progress, continues, “Proud of you.”

“I know I’m just one person,” says Enjolras. “But—it’s starting to feel like things are really possible. Like, really, really possible. Imminently possible, not just _eventually_ possible.”

Grantaire doesn’t know what to say to that, so he hums to show he’s listening. That’s better than saying something sappy, like _I’ll follow you wherever, to any degree of possibility_ , right?

Talk about the meeting slides into talk about Cosette and Marius, which in turn slips into the shortage of crèche places available, which twists back into how the couple could probably manage one if they use Cosette’s dad’s connections, once she decides to go back to work, but it’s anyone’s guess if they will.

_I’m talking family policy with you_ , Grantaire thinks, helplessly, _and in about five minutes you’re going to do something with ropes and I may or may not be involved but I’ll be there. How._

Enjolras is still riding some sort of internal high as they enter his apartment.

“Okay,” he says, dropping his keys on the hall table. “I have an idea. I mean. I wanted to ask you something? Which is related to the idea.”

“Okay…” says Grantaire.

Enjolras leads them back into his bedroom and sits at the desk, opening his laptop.

“What—” Grantaire says.

“I have a reference picture for you,” says Enjolras.

_Dear God, please no_ , Grantaire thinks.

“That’s what you use for art, right? References?” Enjolras continues.

Grantaire clears his throat. “Yes. That’s. Yes, I do.”

_Please do not make me look at someone else’s naked body right now_ , he thinks.

But the picture Enjolras brings up—the picture Enjolras has _saved on his desktop, what the ever loving fuck_ —isn’t a photograph, but a fairly bare-bones sketch, probably meant more for instruction or maybe simple aesthetics than actual titillation.

The figure in the image is frogtied, with its ankles bound to its thighs, while its arms are in a boxtie behind its back, palms cupping the opposite elbows. Enjolras opens a second image, which turns out to be the figure in the same position, albeit from a different angle. Like, in case Grantaire needed the second image in order to figure out what Enjolras wanted.

“So. That?” Grantaire says.

“Yes,” says Enjolras. “If that’s okay? I just really can’t do the arm thing by myself, and it looked… I want to try it.”

“Sure thing,” says Grantaire, trying to keep his voice from climbing too high. “I’m going to get a drink of water. You change into something comfortable. Not those jeans.”

Enjolras nods.

Grantaire takes his time in the kitchen, trying to slow his breathing.

This is all completely fine.

He’s got this under control.

And he does have this under control, where ‘this’ is the mechanics of the operation, the knots that will be best, how to position Enjolras’s limbs.

It all starts to fall apart when he remembers this is _Enjolras’s_ body he’s planning for.

After a reasonable length of time starts drifting into an unreasonable amount of time, Grantaire heads back to Enjolras’s room. The door is open, so he raps on the doorframe and walks in.

Enjolras is sitting on the rug in front of his dresser, running his hands through the ropes coiled in front of his crossed legs. He’s changed into a black long-sleeved t-shirt, which is so thin it’s almost sheer, and dark blue pajama pants.

“Ready?” Grantaire asks, sitting in front of him. “We’re using these, today?”

_We_. Grantaire keeps his gaze steady.

“Yes.”

Enjolras pushes the ropes toward Grantaire and bends his knees, tucking his ankles against his upper thighs. His toes are basically framing his crotch, so Grantaire keeps his focus on the ropes, on keeping his hands steady as he makes the loops. He tries to touch Enjolras’s thighs as little as possible, clothed as they are. Still, some touching is inevitable: he has to check the fit, no matter the heady jumble of emotions that would distract him if they could.

“Feels okay?”

“Feels good,” Enjolras corrects, the words coming out soft.

“Good.”

Grantaire moves around to Enjolras’s back. Enjolras bends his elbows and grips his arms like the figure in the sketches, and Grantaire adjusts the angle a little before beginning the bind.

“And that?” Grantaire checks, once he’s done.

Enjolras wriggles his fingers. “Good.”

“Okay. How long?”

“Can I do half an hour?”

“You tell me,” Grantaire says. “Whatever feels right.”

“I thought you’d done this before.”

“I have, but, one, it’s been a while, and two, what feels right for one person might not feel right for another, depending on experience level, or flexibility, or the kinds of ropes used…”

Grantaire kind of can’t believe they’re having this entire conversation _while Enjolras is already tied up_. Then again, it’s Enjolras, who could probably take down entire far-right political parties while hogtied.

He thinks about the picture Enjolras texted him, his ankle tied to the desk chair. Maybe that’s not such a hyperbolic thought after all.

“That makes sense,” Enjolras allows.

“So, thirty minutes?” Grantaire stands up.

“Wait,” says Enjolras.

Grantaire stops, halfway to the door. “Do you need something?”

“You could… stay? If you wanted.”

“If that’s what you want,” Grantaire says.

Enjolras huffs. “I have a Spotify playlist, called ‘Quiet’? It’s piano solos. You could put it on. And stay.”

Dutifully, Grantaire crosses back to the desk, locates the playlist, and turns up the volume so the music can be heard properly. Not loud, of course, but not so soft that you’ll miss the _pianissimo_.

“You can take the bed,” says Enjolras.

When Grantaire looks at him, his eyes are closed.

Grantaire tugs off his shoes, then sits crossed-legged on the bed. Is he supposed to be watching Enjolras? Or not watching him?

Enjolras didn’t say.

Enjolras’s eyes remain closed.

Grantaire looks away.

_He asked me to stay, not to stare_ , he tells himself.

He sets the alarm on his phone and proceeds to inspect the room the way he hasn’t on his previous visits.

(There have been previous visits. Because Grantaire has been in Enjolras’s room multiple times. To do non-sexy versions of the things Grantaire normally does in sexy ways, only not in a while, not for over a year before Grantaire walked into whatever this arrangement is.) 

It’s a standard room, as furniture goes: bed, desk and chair, dresser, armoire. They’re all wooden, just dark enough to feel elegant but not imposing. They probably shine warm when Enjolras has the blinds open, during the day. The top of the dresser is crowded: books, folders, an ironic touristy mug Jehan probably bought him, a really expensive pair of noise-cancelling headphones. There’s a corkboard hanging on the wall just to the side of the desk, it, too overflowing with bounty. There are flyers and stickers from old protests, as expected, but also glossy pictures of their friends: Enjolras, Combeferre, and Courfeyrac in front of the law building at the university; Enjolras letting Jehan add stripes of colored paint to his cheeks before a rally (if Grantaire remembers that day correctly, Cosette was the one wielding the camera); Enjolras and Feuilly, posing in front of a small waterfall in an anonymous wood; the group picture Enjolras insisted on taking the year before, at the start of a meeting. It’s not one of the serious ones, though, not the one that Enjolras posted on Facebook, where they’re all more or less standing upright and vaguely smiling. In this picture, Grantaire is carrying Jehan, bridal-style, and Joly has clambered onto Courfeyrac’s back, and somehow Cosette convinced Eponine to make that back-to-back spy pose with her. Enjolras is the only one actually looking at the camera, and he’s grinning, too wide for an official photo, one hand on Combeferre’s shoulder, who’s kneeling in front, his arms stretched out.

Grantaire is startled when the alarm goes off, and he immediately glances over at Enjolras. It’s not that he forgot Enjolras was there—not by a long shot, how could he?—but the tension had eased from his body over the course of the half-hour, leaving him comfortable on Enjolras’s bed, as if it were natural for him to be staring at a wall of Enjolras’s bedroom while Enjolras sat on the floor, bound.

Enjolras’s breathing is more rapid, and the back of his neck is flushed. 

“Ready?” Grantaire asks.

“Just.” Enjolras’s voice comes out hoarse. “My arms only, please. I’ll do...”

Grantaire pushes away the spike of hurt at that: so what if he’s been untying even the knots Enjolras can get at, once his arms are free? Enjolras gets to make the decisions, every time. Grantaire doesn’t get to be hurt when those decisions change from week to week.

Grantaire kneels down behind Enjolras, untying the bonds around his arms, but when he goes to rub his shoulders, his forearms, Enjolras flinches away.

Grantaire freezes.

“Um,” says Enjolras, his voice high-pitched as his fingers scramble at the knots around his thighs.

Grantaire shifts so he’s at Enjolras’s side, so he can properly see Enjolras’s face, and— _oh_.

Grantaire can also see the outline of Enjolras’s half-hard dick against his pajama pants.

“Sorry, sorry,” Enjolras moans, miserable, as he pulls the last of the rope from his thighs and tucks himself into a ball, his arms tight around his knees.

“It’s fine,” Grantaire assures him, trying to keep the hysteria out of his voice. “It’s natural.”

Enjolras is shaking his head, rocking forward and back a little on the rug. “No, no. It’s not… it’s not _like that_.”

“Okay,” says Grantaire, his palms raised.

“I don’t…” Enjolras sighs, frustrated. “I don’t want you to think I’m, like. Getting off on it. That’s not what you signed up for.”

_I’m not really sure what I signed up for_ , Grantaire thinks.

“It’s natural,” he repeats. “It’s fine, okay? I get it. Not a big deal.” 

Enjolras worries at his lip, his brow still furrowed.

“Is this the first time it’s happened, while…?” Grantaire asks. “That could be startling. It’s okay.”

Enjolras shakes his head again. “No. I ignore it though, promise.”

_Why the fuck would you do that_ , Grantaire wonders, and has to make a serious effort—a Herculean effort, for real, he wants a new Greek myth written just for this moment—not to think about Enjolras, alone in his bedroom, tied by Grantaire’s hands, _getting hard_ and then fucking willing it away.

Grantaire tries to come up with a new way to say, _it’s fine, it’s natural, it’s whatever, it’s your body, do what you want_ , but what he says instead is, “But you must… get off, sometimes?”

Enjolras shrugs. “Yeah, occasionally. Biology.”

He doesn’t look very impressed by it.

Grantaire is struck with a thought: “You don’t ever let yourself enjoy it, do you?”

“What?”

“Touching yourself.” Grantaire swallows.

Enjolras looks confused now, which is better than the misery and self-loathing that had been all over his face minutes before. “No? It’s just, like, maintenance. Something that has to get done, every once in a while. Um. A little more often, lately?”

_Oh my god_ , Grantaire thinks. _If I make it through this conversation alive, I deserve sainthood. Knighthood. Immortality, something._

“You should try it sometime,” Grantaire says, with some reserve of boldness he did not realize he possessed, at least not when it came to Enjolras. For dumb nights out with Bahorel, sure.

“What?” Enjolras says. His blush is receding, his coloring fading back to normal.

“Enjoying it,” says Grantaire.

Enjolras looks at him for a beat, holding his gaze. Eventually, he says, “I’ll take that under advisement.”

Grantaire says a hasty goodbye, then flees.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some quick French cultural notes!  
> Regarding tertiary education: a typical French undergraduate course of study takes three years, resulting in a _license_ , so the three years are L1, L2, and L3 respectively. After those three years, Enjolras is continuing on for a Master's in law. Currently, he's in M2 (his second year, which he's doing en alternance). Americans who went to law school, take note! L2 is not 2L.   
> Regarding eggs: Eggs are not a particularly traditional French breakfast food, but a) my favorite café here offers scrambled eggs as part of its brunch menu and b) I have this idea that Grantaire spent a summer in England at one point and occasionally whips up a Full English for the others.

Grantaire is walking back to his apartment from a Sunday morning brunch in the park with Joly and company when Enjolras runs up to him, panting, and grabs at his arm.

“You all right?” Grantaire asks.

“Yes, yes,” says Enjolras, brushing hasty kisses in the vicinity of Grantaire’s cheeks. Enjolras looks around, taking in their surroundings, then tugs Grantaire half a block away and into a small community garden.

The benches are all taken, so Grantaire stops them just inside the gate.

“You’re sure you’re okay?” Grantaire prompts.

“I.” Enjolras stops. His eyes dart down, then back up to meet Grantaire’s. “I did what you said to do.”

“What…”

“Enjoyed myself.”

Grantaire honest-to-God reaches out to grasp the one of the gate rails. The metal is rough and cool beneath his fingers.

“And… how… was that?”

“I don’t normally let myself think,” says Enjolras. “I did, this time. You said… it was okay?”

Grantaire nods.

“And, I, um.” Enjolras places his hand around Grantaire’s, the one still wrapped around the railing.

Grantaire doesn’t move. Grantaire keeps so, so still. He could be admitted to a museum as a statue, probably: _Medusa’s only known modern victim_.

Enjolras steps forward, right into Grantaire’s space, so if Grantaire took a deep breath, their chests would touch. Enjolras tilts his head up, and kisses him.

The kiss lasts a second, maybe two, barely long enough for Grantaire to react, to _kiss back, dammit._

Enjolras takes a tiny step back; his fingers are still warm over Grantaire’s. Grantaire opens his mouth, dumbly, what the fuck does he even _say_ to that, but Enjolras beats him to it.

“I like you,” he says. “And I want to take you out to dinner. Or a play. Or a… gallery opening? Something you’d like.” Enjolras tugs Grantaire’s hand off the railing, but continues to hold it. Their clasped hands hang between them.

“Dinner—sounds good,” Grantaire manages. “And then, a play, or a gallery, or anything, another time. We don’t have to do it all at once.”

“No?” Enjolras’s eyes are searching.

“No,” says Grantaire.

“Good,” says Enjolras.

He’s smiling, and his lips are _right there_ , curved and pink and waiting, so Grantaire ducks forward and kisses him, soft and slow.

When he pulls away, Enjolras says, “Tonight?”

“What?” Grantaire is still dazed by the kiss. By the kisses. Brief as they both were.

“Can I take you to dinner, tonight? Is it too soon? Do people go out to dinner on Sundays?” Enjolras says.

“I can do dinner tonight,” Grantaire says. “Yes. Let’s. And you know it doesn’t matter what other people do.”

“Okay,” says Enjolras. “I need to—and you probably have things you were planning on doing today—but, anyway, tonight? I’ll text you?”

_How do you not see that nothing else could be more important than this_ , Grantaire thinks. _I’d tell a Louvre curator to take a number, to get in line. To leave a message and I’ll get back to them as soon as I have made the tiniest bit of progress into wrapping my brain around the fact that you, Enjolras, want to kiss me._

“Yeah,” says Grantaire. “Tonight.”

Enjolras squeezes his hand, darts up for a last, quick kiss, and then disappears around the corner.

Grantaire stands, stock-still, by the entrance to the garden for several minutes, until a large family needs to pass by and he’s startled into movement.

_Enjolras. Kissed me_ , he thinks.

The way back to his apartment seems unfamiliar—or not unfamiliar, not that, exactly, but somehow fresh and new, the colors of the awnings brighter, the angles of the buildings a little sharper, like he’s entered a new, hyper-realistic reality.

Once back at his apartment, Grantaire thinks about the vague cloud of things he was maybe going to do today, then promptly shoves them off of his mental to-do list. They’ll keep. They will all freaking keep, and they will have to, because this afternoon he’s incapable of doing anything other than flopping onto the couch, thanks, and thinking about Enjolras, who got himself off, possibly (probably?) while thinking about Grantaire. Or at least, like, a Grantaire-adjacent activity, if he’d been thinking about his scarves and ropes. 

Grantaire buries his face in the couch cushions. What is his _life_?

It’s only when Enjolras texts him with a time and location—a Mediterranean restaurant Grantaire has never been to, but recalls hearing Enjolras and Musichetta discussing at some point—that Grantaire remembers he has to prepare to see Enjolras again. Soon. Tonight.

What is he supposed to do?

What is he supposed to wear?

For real: how is one supposed to act when faced with the prospect of going out (on a date, right? This is unequivocally a date) with the _love of one’s life_ , the _long_ - _cherished subject of one’s wildest dreams_?

Grantaire is not prepared to handle this.

Time for the Phone-a-Friend lifeline.

Reluctantly, he settles on Combeferre, because he’s the only one Grantaire really trusts to not blab about it to any of their other friends. Well, and Eponine, maybe, but Grantaire’s not emotionally ready to handle her particular tough-love right now.

“Hi,” says Grantaire, after Combeferre picks up. “So theoretically if you were going out to dinner with the best person on the planet, what would you wear?”

“Theoretically,” says Combeferre.

“Theoretically,” repeats Grantaire.

“Then, theoretically, it would depend on the kind of place you were going for dinner. You want to match your clothes to the environment, right, and maybe half a step above, to show you’re aiming to impress. Given that this other person is, as you say, the best person on the planet, I assume you’re aiming to impress,” says Combeferre.

“Yes,” says Grantaire at once. “Definitely that.”

“Okay, then,” says Combeferre.

A beat. “But, like,” Grantaire says. “Specifically.”

“Specifically theoretically?”

“Specifically theoretically, what should _I_ wear?” Grantaire relays the name of the restaurant.

Combeferre hums, then says, “Your nicest jeans. The dark ones, without the frayed hems. That green button-down. And your brown jacket.”

Grantaire grabs a pen—a good pen, a drawing one, whoops—and writes this down. At the moment, he doesn’t trust his mind to retain any information other than, _Enjolras, tonight._

“Okay, yes, I can do that,” Grantaire says. “Anything else?”

“Socks, shoes, underwear…” Combeferre’s tone is dry.

“No, I, uh, got that,” says Grantaire, even though, hell, who knows, maybe not. He writes those items down too, just to be safe. “Any other advice?”

“This is the best person on the planet?”

“ _Yes_.”

“Treat him like it. And let him know,” says Combeferre. 

Grantaire is fifteen minutes early for dinner. He’s not sure he’s ever been fifteen minutes early anywhere, in his entire life. He takes out his phone, flicks through his text messages for about a minute, then puts it back into his pocket.

He doesn’t really care about looking busy. He’s _not_ busy, or bored. He’s early, and he’s waiting. (For the best person on the planet.)

Enjolras shows up five minutes later, in black jeans that cling to his thighs and a deep red shirt. In the low lighting of the restaurant, he looks ravishing. (Then again, Enjolras would look ravishing in airport lighting, in the florescent lights of a shopping center. Enjolras is ravishing in the dark.)

Grantaire brushes kisses against the sides of Enjolras’s cheeks, left, right, and Enjolras takes his hand as they make their way to an empty table inside.

“I’ve never been here before,” Grantaire says, after the waiter hands them menus. “Any recommendations?”

And just like that, they’re off: Grantaire’s entire body is still buzzing, every muscle thrumming, but he’s also managing to hold a conversation with Enjolras. A normal conversation, without (too many) embarrassing squeaks or coughs, just like they’ve been doing on all those walks back to Enjolras’s place.

Under the table, Enjolras rests his foot against Grantaire’s, their calves touching lightly.

They talk long after their plates are clear, and then Enjolras insists on paying.

“Can I walk you home, for a change?” Enjolras asks, as they step out into the clear night.

“All right,” says Grantaire.

He brushes aside the last vestiges of nervousness and reaches for Enjolras’s hand; Enjolras lets him take it.

The walk is quiet, mostly, but as they approach the apartment building, Enjolras says, “We could do this again, next weekend? I don’t know what’s playing anywhere, but. I’ll find something, for us, for Saturday, if you want.”

“I’d like that,” says Grantaire.

“And…” Enjolras hesitates. “You could still come over Friday, after the meeting.”

Grantaire’s heart, which settled over dinner, over the walk, lurches into high speed again.

“I’d like that, too,” he says.

“Okay,” says Enjolras.

They stop outside Grantaire’s building. Enjolras hooks a finger into Grantaire’s belt loop, tugs. Grantaire goes, and then they’re kissing.

Longer, so much longer than they could in the park, surrounded by parents and small children, but not very long, really, not that long at all. Grantaire has a hand in Enjolras’s curls, not pulling, just _there_ , and their mouths are sliding against each other, and when they pull away to breathe, it’s only a hair’s width. Their noses brush.

Enjolras steps away, his eyes wide, blown pupils looking even darker than usual under the streetlights, and Grantaire lets his hands fall back to his sides.

“I had a really good time tonight,” Enjolras whispers. 

“Me, too,” says Grantaire.

“Friday?”

Grantaire nods.

“Okay. Goodnight, R.”

“Text me when you get home, so I know you made it?” Grantaire says.

Enjolras does.

They texted a bit before, before this whole thing started, but mostly about things related to meetings, to the birthday present they were all going in on for Joly, that sort of thing. Things relevant to the group. There have been more casual texts since the day Grantaire first helped Enjolras out, as it were, but not all that much.

Now, though, Enjolras texts him a picture of his lunch, clementine conspicuously in the center of the image, and Grantaire sends him a comic he found about effective activism, and also a cat gif, which features a kitten that is so exactly Jehan, Grantaire wants to add animal metamorphosis to the list of Jehan’s probable magic capabilities (which is exactly what he tells Enjolras, who agrees).

Grantaire tends to send goodnight texts, Enjolras good morning ones, and it works. (Holy shit, it _works_.)

Musichetta calls him on his good mood on Thursday night, when he’s over at their apartment, cooking soup for her boyfriends, who have both come down with colds.

“Ask me Sunday,” Grantaire says.

He and Enjolras haven’t talked about telling people—what they’re telling people, when they’re telling people—and Grantaire doesn’t know exactly what he would say, anyway.

They’re… dating, he guesses. Right? And maybe something else. Dating-with-bondage-benefits, or whatever.

“Bahorel says Enjolras has been pretty chipper this week, too,” says Musichetta, in a sly voice.

“Um,” says Grantaire. “That’s…”

“Nothing to do with you, I’m sure?” She pulls out bowls from a cupboard.

Grantaire decides not to say anything, and to focus on ladling the soup instead.

At the meeting on Friday, Enjolras is wearing that damn green scarf again. He fiddles with the edges while Combeferre speaks about updated data relevant to their current cause, and raises his eyebrows at Grantaire when he catches him looking.

_Never mind workplace discrimination or unequal pay_ , Grantaire thinks. _It’s_ Enjolras _who should be illegal._

Blessedly, the meeting eventually draws to a close, and while Grantaire prepares to talk with Feuilly about his boxing form for a few minutes, Enjolras appears at his side almost at once.

“Ready to head out?” Enjolras asks.

Grantaire looks around; Marius and Cosette are the only ones who have left. Everyone else is still there, and Grantaire would bet the income from all of next week’s commissions that every single one of them is only pretending not to be watching or listening in.

“If you are,” he says.

They say their goodbyes, and Enjolras is reaching for his hand before the café door is shut behind them.

“I guess I should have asked, before,” Enjolras says. “About—in front of the others? Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Grantaire says.

If there’s any embarrassment to be had, it’s knowing that everyone else is thinking, _Did R finally get the boy? Are his days of pining over at last? How precious._

“There’s…” Enjolras trails off. “I talked to Combeferre, about you. About this. He says it’s important to be clear.”

“It is,” says Grantaire, privately thinking that Combeferre probably deserves a fruit basket. An expensive chocolate selection. A tour of an exclusive moth collection? He’ll get working on that.

“I’d like us to be—together. An us. Combeferre seemed to think that would probably be okay with you, but I need to hear it from you, and if it’s too soon or you need time, you can let me know, it’s okay, I know that when I decide things sometimes I just—go, and not everybody can do that.”

Grantaire lets out a helpless little laugh. “Apollo, I have wanted there to be an ‘us’ for _years_. I don’t need more time.”

“Years?”

“Years,” Grantaire confirms. “Is that… with what we were doing, before… Does that make you uncomfortable?”

“No,” says Enjolras. “You always made me feel safe.”

Grantaire’s breath hitches.

Enjolras, honest and open like this, is almost too much to be borne.

(Grantaire will bear it. Grantaire will welcome it.)

Enjolras keeps a hand on Grantaire’s back as they enter the apartment, and directs him into the living room, onto the couch.

Grantaire isn’t sure if this is supposed to be an on-the-road-hopefully-to-boyfriends night, or a quiet-Enjolras’s-brain-with-bondage night, but then Enjolras is kissing him and it doesn’t seem to matter. Grantaire wraps an arm around Enjolras’s waist, tugging him closer, and Enjolras’s hands are fluttering between his jaw, his cheek, his unruly hair. Every place Enjolras’s fingers touch lights up, and Grantaire imagines that his skin is marked with some kind of after-glow, a luminescent trail, _Enjolras was here_.

After some unknowable amount of time, and a mutual but unspoken agreement to pause, Enjolras is curled against Grantaire, his head on Grantaire’s chest. Grantaire has a thumb underneath Enjolras’s shirt, rubbing tiny circles against his hip.

“I’ve had sex before,” Enjolras says abruptly. “Just so you know. I think you might be under the impression that I haven’t? But I had a boyfriend for a few months, in L2. We didn’t… I don’t have a _lot_ of experience, but, some.”

“Okay,” Grantaire says. “That’s good to know. I’ve also had sex before, with people of a variety of genders. Definitely enough experience to know what I’m doing, promise.” He brushes a quick, teasing kiss against Enjolras’s temple.

“The ropes thing—it really isn’t about sex. Not all the time, at least,” Enjolras says.

“Okay,” says Grantaire again. “That’s fine, obviously.”

“But it could be, sometimes, if you wanted to try that,” Enjolras continues.

“That could be… really nice,” says Grantaire, and decides he deserves an award for Understatement of the Millenia. “We can, you know, experiment. Figure out what you like. And if it turns out that you don’t want sex to factor in at all, even occasionally, that works, too.”

Enjolras nods against him. “I think it will, just not always.”

“I don’t know how much research you’ve done,” Grantaire says, thinking about the reference drawings Enjolras showed him, “but if there’s anything in that vein that you want to try, we’ll need to talk about it before. Like, actually in advance, not thirty seconds before.”

“I can do that,” says Enjolras. “I don’t think there is, but I can do that. And the same goes for you.”

“So far it seems that we’re pretty well aligned,” Grantaire says, his voice hoarse. He clears his throat. “But there’s something… Something I should probably be clear about, before we go further.”

Enjolras shifts a bit, sliding off of his lap, so he can look Grantaire in the eye.

Grantaire appreciates the gesture in theory, but in practice, maybe not so much. He looks down at his hands, then forces his gaze up again.

“There’s a line in my head between the kind of discomfort restraints can cause and actually, directly inflicting or receiving pain. I don’t know if that’s a real line that makes sense, but it’s how I see things, and I won’t do it, ever. I’m not going to leave you if you decide that’s something you’re into, but I’m not going to be part of it, either.” Grantaire draws in a shaky breath.

With his right hand, he pushes up his left sleeve, so Enjolras can see the thin lines of parallel scars running along the underside of his forearm. Grantaire’s pretty sure Enjolras has never seen them before. He doesn’t actively try to hide them so much anymore, but he still wears a lot of long sleeves, out of habit, and when his clothes don’t cover his arms, the skin is still likely to be obscured by paint or charcoal.

Enjolras makes a pained sound, and a hand darts out toward Grantaire’s left wrist, fingers brushing against the closest scar. Grantaire shivers under his touch.

“Grantaire…”

“I’m fine now,” Grantaire says, firmly. “I haven’t in years, and I know what to do if I feel that impulse. It’s not going to happen again. But I won’t, I can’t, bring anything even close to that into the bedroom. Or,” he adds, trying for a bit of levity, “the living room, the kitchen, wherever these things happen.”

“That makes sense,” Enjolras says. “I’d never ask that of you. And thank you, for telling me.”

Grantaire shrugs, but Enjolras grips his hand.

“I mean it,” Enjolras insists. “Thank you.”

Grantaire nods; Enjolras loosens his hold.

“We can go back to kissing, now,” Grantaire suggests.

Enjolras leans in, but the kiss is only a peck, the swiftest press of lips.

“We might be more comfortable in my bedroom,” Enjolras says. He pauses, then amends, “Maybe not more comfortable. This couch is _really_ comfortable, but the cleanup will be easier.”

“Oh?” says Grantaire. His throat’s dry again.

“If you want,” says Enjolras.

“Yeah,” says Grantaire. It comes out as a whisper, reverent.

Enjolras guides him down the hallway, pushes him onto his bed.

“Want to see you,” Enjolras murmurs. He slips his hands under Grantaire’s shirt; Grantaire lifts his arms.

He’s self-conscious, for a moment, about his thick, dark chest hair, his soft belly, but Enjolras is straddling him, running his hands up and down Grantaire’s chest, around to his back, and there’s no space in Grantaire’s brain for anything but that.

“You, too,” Grantaire manages. “Your shirt.”

Somehow, Enjolras’s shirt comes off, and Grantaire wants _hours_ to stare at the muscles normally hidden by his shirts, tight as they sometimes are, to nip at the trail of golden hairs that disappears below the waistband of his jeans, but right now, Enjolras is hard in his lap, and Grantaire is straining against his jeans, and he thinks the slow time—the slow times, more than one, definitely, so many—will have to wait.

“Enjolras,” he pants.

Enjolras is rocking against him, kissing at his neck, and Grantaire scrambles for Enjolras’s zipper.

“Yeah?” Grantaire prods.

“Yes, _yes_ ,” Enjolras says.

There’s an awkward, clumsy kicking off of pants, and when they’re both down to their underwear, Enjolras’s thighs once again spread wide over Grantaire’s lap, Enjolras whines, “Want to touch you. You were always the one who got—to touch.”

“Anything,” Grantaire says.

Enjolras pushes down the waistband of Grantaire’s underwear, and then his cock is in Enjolras’s hand.

His cock.

Enjolras’s hand.

Enjolras doesn’t seem to quite know what he’s doing, and the angle is awkward, but it’s Enjolras, so Grantaire is willing to give him ten thousand gold stars for attendance and participation and effort and designate this the best handjob, ever. Twenty out of twenty, would receive again.

He comes in two minutes, tops.

Grantaire falls back against the pillows. Enjolras’s lips are redder than usual ( _kissing_ , Grantaire thinks, very distantly, _I did that_ ), and there’s a pleased, hungry look in his eyes as he wipes his hand on the sheet.

“Show me,” Grantaire says, without thinking.

He’s not even clear what he means, exactly, until Enjolras releases his own dick from his briefs, and begins to touch himself.

Just like he must have, the weekend before, after Grantaire told him to.

And now Enjolras is above him, _enjoying himself_.

Grantaire imagines he’ll watch, all the way, at some point, but the sight of Enjolras’s fingers wrapped around his cock is enough to give Grantaire a new burst of energy. He works himself back into a sitting position, one hand low on Enjolras’s back, just above his ass, the other over Enjolras’s hand, which is sticky with a mixture of Grantaire’s semen and Enjolras’s own pre-come.

“That’s it, so perfect, come on,” Grantaire babbles.

It’s not the most coherent or romantic mid-coitus talk, probably, but it seems to do the trick: Enjolras comes into their joined hands, then slumps forward. Grantaire guides Enjolras so he’s lying next to him, Enjolras’s head tucked up onto Grantaire’s shoulder.

“Better with you,” Enjolras murmurs, and Grantaire doesn’t know if he means the sex is better than it was with Enjolras’s ex, or if sex with another person is better than masturbation, but either way, Grantaire will take it.

“Better with you,” Grantaire agrees. He means it in every way.

Enjolras’s breathing evens out, and Grantaire is left with a sleeping, slightly sweaty body curled into his.

Grantaire is pretty sure that, later—not tonight, but tomorrow, or next week, next month, even—there will be other things. Grantaire will tie Enjolras up, thighs spread, and tease him for hours, just licking at his cock, sucking at the tip, until neither of them can take it anymore and Grantaire swallows him down. Or maybe Enjolras will be on his knees, hands tied behind his back, and Grantaire will use some of the thinner scarfs to make a harness, the colors contrasting with Enjolras’s pale, flushed skin. Grantaire will let his cock nudge at Enjolras’s lips, and Enjolras will open his mouth and tongue at it, inexperienced and perfect, and Grantaire will be so, so careful not to thrust, not to choke him.

And he’ll draw Enjolras, of course.

Maybe one of those times when Enjolras just wants to sit quietly, Grantaire will put on the piano playlist, and he’ll have Enjolras hold still while he sketches. Grantaire wants a notebook full of nothing but Enjolras, however he wants to be: clothed, or not; hard or not; bound, or not.

Beside him, Enjolras stirs.

“You’ll stay, right?” Enjolras says. With his eyes still closed, he reaches out, settles a hand on Grantaire’s hip.

“If you want.” 

“Want eggs, in the morning.”

“I can do that.”

“I know,” says Enjolras. 

“I’ll stay,” says Grantaire. 


End file.
